Beth Noveck, point person for President Barack Obama's open government initiative, sketched out the administration's strategy for technology-driven participatory democracy in a speech to state government officials late last month.

Noveck, deputy director for open government in the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), said the administration will demand results -- not just openness -- from its transparency efforts. She outlined a series of principles aimed at making it easier for citizens to interact electronically with government agencies and to ensure those efforts produce tangible benefits.

"We have to focus on the outcomes," said Noveck, speaking April 30 to the National Association of State Chief Information Officers in Baltimore. "We spend much too much time measuring on the basis of the inputs: how much we spent on a project, how much it cost us, how much we've given out in grants, how much we spent on a particular IT system ... instead of asking, ‘What does it help us achieve?'"

It's crucial, she said, for agencies to design interactive Web sites that ask the right questions, target the right audiences and tie citizen feedback into policymaking processes.

Video: Beth Noveck talks about open government.

Asking the Right Question

Simply asking citizens for feedback can produce a flood of unfocused comments that soak up staff time without producing much benefit. Instead, questions should be narrowly crafted to elicit useful information. "You have to design the comment process for the desired end," Noveck said.
She pointed to the OSTP's new blog seeking input on how to meet Obama's memorandum on ensuring the scientific integrity of executive branch decision-making. The blog asks for comments in six specific areas.

"It's beginning to elicit dozens of useful responses -- mind you, not thousands of responses, because it would not be helpful for us to get thousands of responses," Noveck said. "What we're getting are dozens and dozens of targeted and useful responses."

She added that simple ranking tools are available to let Web users rate and prioritize questions. Obama's campaign site -- Change.gov -- used these tools to sort through thousands of user-submitted suggestions.

"At the end of the day, you might have 25 questions that are preselected by the audience -- the community has done some of the work, or self-selecting the questions," Noveck said. "I think of this as Digg-style versus wiki-style. Afterward you have this ranked and rated system that allows people to solicit elicit information in manageable ways."

Reaching the Right People

Noveck said the Peer to Patent program run by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is a good example of how to tap private-sector expertise. The program uses the Web to engage citizen-experts to help review patent applications. Peer to Patent doesn't select specific experts, but it recruits volunteers from communities of people with the right technical and scientific expertise, she said. Teams of volunteers review specific patent applications.

"The group works together on coming up with the best information, rating and ranking each other's information, commenting on each other's information, and then